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The Sailing Frigate, A History In Ship Models

This book is the first of a series. The publisher intends to take selections of the best models to tell the story of specific ship types. Full colour photographs of the selected models provides an enormous amount of visual detail for the historian, the model maker and all those interested in the design and development of sailing ships.

NAME: The Sailing Frigate, A History In Ship Models
CLASSIFICATION: Book Reviews
FILE: R1812
DATE: 220213
AUTHOR: Robert Gardiner
PUBLISHER: Pen & Sword, Seaforth Publishing
BINDING: hard back
PAGES: 128
PRICE: £25.00
GENRE: Non Fiction
SUBJECT:
ISBN: 978-1-84832-160-1
IMAGE: B1812.jpg
BUYNOW: http://tinyurl.com/b8pzn8u
LINKS:
DESCRIPTION: The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich holds the largest collection of scale ship models. The collection is so large that only a tiny percentage is on public display at any time. Many of these models were built by craftsmen as official artefacts and provide a detailed record of the evolution of warship design. As only a handful of the full-size wooden warships have survived, these models provide an essential three dimensional archive.

This book is the first of a series. The publisher intends to take selections of the best models to tell the story of specific ship types. Full colour photographs of the selected models provides an enormous amount of visual detail for the historian, the model maker and all those interested in the design and development of sailing ships.

The author has taken the sailing frigate as the subject for this first book and the illustration is outstanding. The frigate was a vital type of warship in the Georgian Royal Navy. It provided reconnaissance, it supported the line of battle, and it was used for a diverse range of duties around the world, often a single frigate operating without support or direction on the other side of the world. Sailing on the eve of war, or on the dawn of a new truce, only to arrive in its operating area as a new war had started, or and older war ended. The frigate captain therefore had to be resourceful.

As is demonstrated by the selected models, the frigate was never a single class of warship, but a family. That meant that new frigates, well-used frigates and those nearing disposal shared a strong family resemblance but many differences in size, equipment and armament. The smaller frigates were often equipped with sweeps so that they could be sailed as galleys when the wind failed. They carried a few guns in their main armament and these might be mounted on slides or pins, rather than on wheeled carriages, on a single level on the main deck. At the other end of the scale, frigates might be almost the size of a smaller line of battleship and carry a main armament on two decks, having carriage mounted guns, little smaller than those carried by the smaller battleship. They might even carry slide mounted carronades or ‘smashers’ that fired a very heavy shot at close range.

The selected models depict the range and evolution of the frigate in Royal Navy service. Extended captions and introductory text is well-written and highlights features of each model. The beautiful illustration can be appreciated as art and the highest production standards have been achieved. This book should become very popular with all those who have an interest in ships, in design, and in technology.